Kristen Donnelly | Sep 17, 2024

[00:00:00] Speaker A: So thanks again for your time. When I was doing my gentle. I have, first off, so many questions for you because I love the work that you do. I think it's absolutely fascinating. And so one of the first things that popped out, and I have a couple quotes, so bear with me. One of them is burnout is a cultural value, not an individual failing. First off, the penmanship on that. I mean, beautiful. I love it. But what inspired you to get into this world of burnout, and how were you even able to identify that? [00:00:32] Speaker B: Those are two of the probably biggest questions you could ask me. So let's see if I can summarize here. Yeah, I came up with that honestly, after so many years of going to women's conferences and going to sessions on burnout, where essentially. Or, like, stress or exhaustion or, like, you know, know, pick a thing where the answer was like, you're not taking enough bubble baths, and, like, you should just, like, take more time for yourself. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:02] Speaker B: I was like, cool. No. And then combine that with the fact that I ended up living in the United Kingdom for about five years. I lived in Northern Ireland, and it's where I did my doctorate. And you could argue that doing a doctorate is one of the most stressful experiences that a person could go through. And yet I was fine. Like, I didn't burn out at all. Throughout that process and reflect, kind of combining all of those things, I started reflecting on the fact that, like, our culture prioritizes productivity in a way that some other cultures don't. And it's certainly in a way that Northern Ireland didn't. In a way that Ireland doesn't. I kind of joke that they're allergic to efficiency. Say that with deep, deep, deep affection for both of those countries. But looking at how different my doctoral experience was to a lot of my friends in the states, kind of piecing some things together. And then my academic career has been looking at various religious systems and people within those systems. And how does what someone believe about deity affect how they live their lives? I don't care what deity. I'm interested in what that does. And so I've studied a lot about early american Christianity and what it kind of looks like. It's a point of fascination. And I realized that the reason that America has a cultural problem of burnout, the reason that burnout is an american cultural value, is that the first white folks that came systematically genocided a lot of people and then established what would be. You know, what would be. Massachusetts came over with three specific parts of their theology, and they're the Puritans, not to be confused with the pilgrims. Pilgrims did the mythical Thanksgiving. Puritans did this stuff. Everybody wore funny hats and shoe buckles, so very easy to confuse the two. But the Puritans are the ones that came over and wanted to build. Their phrase, literally was a city on a hill. So they wanted to establish. They wanted to establish that. So they have three things in their theology that matter to us today. One is that you are only a good person if you work really hard. Two is that you are only a good person if you work really hard and do it all alone. Three is that you could sleep when you're dead. And the very nice thing about that is that all of those are tenants of capitalism and resource accumulation. And so they came in the 16 hundreds as other groups of white immigrants came, and they wanted to know how to succeed in this new world. They kept looking at them. And so by the time we hit the founding fathers and were codifying laws, the american culture of the fact that, like, working hard gets you far, and working hard means you are a good person is baked into the foundation of the nation. It shows up through all of our myths. It shows up through all of the things that we do. And the quickest way I can say it is, if you're not really sure what I mean by you're only a good person if you work really hard. Think about what you hear. Think about what you feel in your body when you hear that somebody's on government assistance, when you hear that they're on welfare, what is your first thought about that person? And that's what I mean. [00:04:08] Speaker A: Interesting. Very interesting. And it's also because it's so funny, like, the three things that you've said. I mean, I'm so. I'm from New York. I mean, sleep when you're dead is. [00:04:18] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. From Philly. [00:04:19] Speaker A: Like, yeah, yeah. Like, that is. It's just such a prevalent culture. But even. Even what you said about work hard and you have to work hard alone, alone like that, that just, for me, is just so striking because, yeah, there's almost this. In this hustle culture, there's this individualism that just plays out so strongly. How do you combat the stigma behind doing it alone versus reaching out for help? Because, I mean, I'm assuming that's one of the ways that you would tackle burnout, is by talking with people about it. [00:04:52] Speaker B: There is an epidemic of loneliness. We hear this all the time, that it was brewing before lockdowns. It has been accelerated by lockdowns. One of the ways that I would encourage people to think about this a little bit differently is that you're nothing asking for help, necessarily, if you have already done the work to live in an interconnected network. So I think a lot of people here ask for help, and they're asking for help from someone who doesn't know they're struggling. So it's like this big, huge ask. It's this huge amount of emotional labor, and we've got shame tied up in that. We got a lot of things tied up in it. So instead, it's a lot of tiny decisions before you kind of get to that point where it is. Like that other person that you're asking for help from might just be part of the furniture of your life. Now, are there big. Are there still the big leaps? Sure. But you're less alone to make the leap, too. Are there still a lot of. There's still people you have to ask that you've never met before and that things are hard, sure. But you're not starting from a place of isolation. You're starting from a place of community. And we have what we call the four r's of burnouth prevention or recovery, depending on where you are in our burnout spectrum. And one of them is rest, one of them is rejuvenation, one of them is realignment, and the fourth is reconnection. And this is the one where you set up practices in your life to remember that you can't just be in proximity with people. You have to be in relationship with people. And when you build that foundation, help doesn't feel as intimidating. [00:06:31] Speaker A: I'm just sitting with that. But, yeah, that makes just. It makes a lot of sense because so quick background on me. I also. I have a doctorate in pharmacy. And so going through that was fun to see. [00:06:42] Speaker B: I can imagine, the very least. [00:06:44] Speaker A: And burnout was rampant. It was so rampant. But one thing that really struck me and everybody that was with me and even my friends that are also going through their own doc grits in different fields, is that you don't even know you're in burnout until you. Your body crashes and burns. So how do you combat that when you don't even know you're in a cycle? How do you break it? [00:07:04] Speaker B: Assume that you're always in one, especially if you're an american. Just take the base level. Just take the base level assumption that somewhere in there, you're in there. So what is burnout? First of all, burnout is what happens to your mind, body and spirit when you are in an elongated period where your body cannot complete the stress cycle. It can happen anywhere. The World Health Organization will tell you it can only happen at work. And that's absolute nonsense. That is just nonsense. We wrote our own definition of it because we couldn't find one that encompassed everything. You can have caregiver burnout, you can have parent burnout. You can have volunteer burnout. You can have any level of burnout anywhere that you are, where people demand your time, attention, or emotional energy, you can burn out there. And so if you kind of just understand that we never really complete the stress cycle unless we do it intentionally these days. So the stress cycle is a whole lot, and I'm not an expert on it, so this is, like, real dumbed down. Please read burnout by the Nikoski sisters. They go into it a whole lot more, but essentially, it's this whole system of, like, hormones and enzymes and all this kind of other stuff that your body produces when you're in danger. And either you're in emotional danger because you're really stressed, or you're in physical danger, you know, and you got to get out of there. And there's all sorts of kind of things. No matter what stress event happens, this stress cycle is kicked off. No matter tiny or big stress cycle is kicked off. Now, one of the major problems is that that's really good. When you see a bear and you need to run, stress cycle keeps us alive. And then you get to the, like. You get to the place you get safe, you exhale, you have all that adrenaline, and you need to do something with that adrenaline. So you walk around, or, like, you go, maybe you go to sleep, and that might work for you, but you do something, because you can't just sit still. Issue. As far as we know, your body does not know the difference between a bear and a photocopier. So photocopier gets jammed at work, and this is a stress event, but you can't. You fix that. You then go to another thing. There's a stress event with a meeting. Then there's a stress event with an interaction with your colleague. Then there's a stress event because Doordash lost your order. Then there's a stress event because you've got a kid and you're just compacting these. And some of us haven't completed the cycle in decades. There's lots of ways to complete the cycle. The best way that we know that we recommend how to do it is every time you feel stressed, try to do something to move your body as often as possible. If that is getting up and walking to the bathroom and taking the long way, I don't care. Move your body because it helps regulate the hormones. Again, I'm not a hormone person, so the longer you're in that state, though, the less and less and less emotional capacity that you have. So you just don't have the room to make relationship decisions, to take care of yourself, to do all these other things. So instead of thinking of burnout, as I can't get off the sofa, I'm in the hospital. Like, all those kind of other things. Start thinking about burnout as when your emotional capacity begins to get limited. When are you snappier with people? And it's not just a one time. I had a bad day. It's like, overall, when are you more disconnected? When do, when does, when does connecting with yourself feel overwhelming? All those kind of things could be very much warming signs that you are losing your emotional capacity. [00:10:17] Speaker A: So, like, that makes so much sense. And it's also because I, I would joke sometimes with my friends that, like, when I get texts from them, I'm a very slow texter by nature, but they'll text me, and it's like, hey, guys, like, I'm running on empty. Like, there's only one me in here, and she's trying her best, and it's like, I love my friends, but I don't even have the emotional. I truly don't have the emotional capacity to respond to text messages sometimes. [00:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:42] Speaker A: I never knew was a symptom of burnout. That's so interesting. [00:10:45] Speaker B: I mean, here's the thing that's, I don't think talked about enough, because let's be very clear, a lot of people make money off of curing people's burnout. And so, like, it depends on, you know, I mean, yes, I want you to buy my book. I want you to, like, you know, I want you to do all those things. That's kind of a cottage industry in and of itself. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:05] Speaker B: There's going to be a lot of people telling you a lot of things about what can and cannot be a sign, what feels and what doesn't feel. Lots of things, lots of cures, lots of all of that. You're going to know for yourself what is and what isn't. And if I'm saying that and that terrifies you, my guess is you are in burnout, and we can help you find someone to figure out what that means. There's a couple things. Like, again, we recommend these four pillars that we have making tiny changes. And I mean tiny, because your brain never wants you to change. So it fight. So tiny, tiny, tiny changes. Make sure you're getting actual sleep, which means get a sleep study if you've never gotten one. That's my biggest recommendation when I talk to doctors. So many people. So many more people have apnea than they think they do. So get it. If your insurance pays for it, man, get a sleep study. CPAP's are annoying, but, like, when you get more sleep for longer, you deal with it. The second one is rejuvenation, which is that you need to do things that you find fun. Joy is actually a non negotiable entity in human life. We have pretended it is for children and, like, Disney princesses, and it is not. It is for all of us. And so the things that you do that bring you joy, that spark joy, that make you feel more human, that help connect you back to your humanity in that way, guard them, schedule them, cultivate them, make sure they happen. The third one is reconnection, which is do whatever your spiritual practice is to remember that you are not the center of the universe. [00:12:37] Speaker A: Hmm. That's interesting. Why? [00:12:41] Speaker B: Because when we think we're the center of the universe, we tend to say yes to things we don't need to say yes to. And we tend to believe that we can do things alone. We tend to forget that it's not just about asking for help. It's about recognizing that there are things you literally cannot do. You are not good at it. You are not gifted at it. You don't have enough money. You don't have enough time. You don't have enough whatever. I think a huge part of burnout management is to recognize the limits of your control. So my husband gets really mad about certain buckets of things all the time, and I'll let him rant. And he wants me to join him in that anger, and I cannot. And I always say to him, like, honey, what is my policy? And he's like, you do not get mad at things that matter a whole lot and that you cannot control. Exactly. Exactly. I have decided. I look at my capacity for a change. I look at what I can affect, and I adjust my anger accordingly. Now, that's not to say I don't have anger. I am an absolutely rabid sports fan. [00:13:37] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [00:13:38] Speaker B: And so I can get very angry and very invested in things that don't matter. [00:13:45] Speaker A: What are new teams, I have to ask. [00:13:47] Speaker B: Oh, mostly Philadelphia. So Phillies, Flyers, Eagles, and then irish rugby, Liverpool football, and I don't know, I have a couple other, like, subsidiary teams, but if you. Yeah, if you poke me, I'll bleed Phillies. [00:14:02] Speaker A: So that's. That's amazing. We were actually. So. My brothers are huge football fans and so they were talking to me about Liverpool. Oh, no. Didn't you guys recently lose a match? I don't want to start any beef. But didn't. [00:14:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:16] Speaker A: I'm so sorry. I only know that because they were watching. It was Manu versus Southampton. And so it was like, it's in the bright. All this. [00:14:26] Speaker B: Okay, so listen, everybody. Like, I am a. I'm a fairly zen sports fan when it comes to every. In terms of, like, winning and loss records. Why? Because I look more at the play. Like, if your quality of play is. Is shit. Right. And I'm real worried about the patterns you're developing. Like, that's really annoying. But if I see the score and, like. Because the other thing that I think a lot of sports fans. Well, we can come back to burnout in a minute. But I think a lot of sports fans forget is that all of these are professional teams full of professional athletes. [00:14:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:57] Speaker B: And sometimes other teams are just like, sometimes your team didn't suck. Sometimes other teams are just better, so. But I'm a. I'm a total wonk. I know all the stats. I know the history. I know this. I mean, I'm a total wonk. But anyway, all that to say, that's a huge part of my spiritual practice is to center what I can and cannot control. So here is this whole bucket of life that is incredibly important and very smart. People have told me that the only way I can engage in this bucket is three specific ways. And other than that, don't worry, the bucket, like, you can't do anything. So I could choose to keep getting mad about the bucket, scared about the bucket, feel things about it. Or I can just say, they told me to do these three things and I'm going to go over here. This works a lot easier. I think, like, I'm bipolar, so I'm a little neurodivergent. So I think sometimes this works better for my brain than some other people's brain. But my business partner and best friend is not as neurotypical, and this is what she does, too, to survive. So we think it probably works for a couple different kinds of brains. You might just have to. Have to kind of go there and kind of do the work. But I am a big believer that the only thing I can do every single day is love the person in front of me. That's it. Whatever that permutation looks like, whatever that complication looks like, whatever it is, it's why I try really hard to be incredibly polite to service workers and, like, housekeepers and everybody else I account, because my job is to love that person the best that I can. And that's a big part of why I choose not to spend a lot of my time angry at things that do have consequences. I love the Phillies with so much of my soul. And as we sit here on September 16, we have the best record in baseball, and we're most likely going to the post season. As much as I want rings on their fingers, the sun will rise tomorrow. Nobody is going to lose their life. Babies will still be born. No one's even gonna lose their job if they don't like. It's all, it all is what it is. So those are the four things that if you cultivate tiny, tiny ways, we think it kind of provides a little bit of a cushion for the bad days. So if you are. If you've slept well and if you're doing things that make you happy, to remind you that you are a human, if you have managed to figure out what you can and cannot control, and so therefore, don't get mad at things you can't do anything about and spin out into other stress cycles. And if you make sure that you are in relationship and not proximity, those things kind of form a way to keep you safe. And the more you do it, the more emotional capacity you'll continue to create. [00:17:32] Speaker A: Hmm. That's. That's so interesting. For a couple of reasons. I. Let me try to gather my thoughts on this because I. Burnout has just been such a defining characteristic of not only my life, but the lives of the people around me and the culture of the people around me. And so, for instance, I'm an immigrant, daughter of immigrants. My parents came from Nigeria, and all they know is hard work, hard work and dedication, and you work hard in a workout. And that's just not that. It's not true. But there are different ways to go about work and hardworking, and you don't have to go through it load and just so. It just. There's just a lot of lives of mine that are copping up. And you say this, but when you're in a cycle that you can escape, for instance, that caregiver burnout, when you're a parent and you can't just stop being a mom for 2 seconds and you want to try to keep the four rs intact, but it's just, how do you do that? Like, how. Day to day, like, how are you able to. [00:18:33] Speaker B: So, first of all, you might not be able to do all four every day. So, like, that's. And there's not. There's not a menu where I hand you this thing and it's. And it says, like, you know, this is the thing. So I can speak for. I can speak for. I know. I can speak for Erin because she writes about her caregiver burnout in the book. And so the joy stuff is not daily. It's still hard, but it's very specific to, like, you know, we really like spending time together, and so we make sure to do that as often as we can. We get her out of her house and into a place where she's not a caregiver as often as she can. And that is a possibility for her. That might not be a possibility for other caregivers, but something she has to do, no matter what, at least for an hour a week, is yoga. She's got to do her yoga practice. She's got to figure that out. And that's what works for her. She really makes sure that she watches shows that make her happy or whatever. But I think one of the biggest things for her is that she gave herself grace, and she also gave herself permission to be frustrated, because, especially as a daughter, caregiving for parents, there's a lot of cultural narratives about how daughters should just, like, be dutiful. Yeah, and that's, again, nonsense. And so being able to say, like, this really sucks, and I did not sign up for this. I'm not trained for this. I didn't get this. I don't do any of it and all of that. So, like, we. You know, it ebbs and flows. There's seasons that you're good or you're not, but the problem is. Not the problem. Sorry, but the kind of. The point is, the more that you know, the more you try out the four things about the four r's, the more you practice them, the more you know what works and what doesn't. So when you have time, when you are at your emotional absolute end, you don't have to start playing around and make decisions about what can and cannot work. You know, I need an hour of yoga. Like, my body's feeling weird. I gotta take a walk. And it just becomes part of your default programming. [00:20:30] Speaker A: I see. [00:20:31] Speaker B: This is really hard stuff. It's really complicated. It's really personal. It changes throughout your life. Yeah, something could work at one point that isn't gonna work. At another point, I, you know, I am not a parent. I've talked to a lot of parents, though, and there are seasons where very little of this is possible. But the parents that I have talked to say, if there's elongated seasons where it is not possible, that is a bigger conversation, that there might be more support needed there. And even if it might, I had somebody say, my child's really sick. And I said, I can guarantee you the hospital either has a social worker or has a phone number for one. Like, the way you are living right now cannot be the only option. Like, just check your options, see if there's other networks, see what's going on. And if it is, and I'm totally wrong, then I apologize. But I know those of us who are exhausted and or are in trauma don't want options. We want pathways, and so we'll only walk the pathway in front of us until somebody says, you might not need to be on this one. [00:21:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:32] Speaker B: Take three steps to the left and there's a better one. But you need somebody to do that impetus to shove you a little bit. [00:21:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Because how would you know? [00:21:40] Speaker B: How would you know? And all you're doing is getting up and putting 1ft in front of the other, and that's all you can do. And so this is where, again, the relationships versus proximity come into it, where, like, I have a. I have a friend who's gone through a lot recently, and she needed to go figure out a gift for her partner, and she outsourced that to us. She texted us and said, can somebody start sending me etsy links? [00:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And there was no judgment. There was just like, oh, thank you. This is going to be fun. I'd love to do this. [00:22:11] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, that reminds me. I'm horrible at planning. And so for my birthday, whenever it comes around, I always, like, procrastinate until the absolute last moment, until I'm just like, friends gathered, please help my, help me, help me help myself. One thing. Well, actually, before I even go there, you mentioned that you're in business with your best friend. How is that? [00:22:33] Speaker B: Wonderful. [00:22:33] Speaker A: Like, how are you able. Because I love. I love my best friends, but they could be much sometimes. So how are you able to keep the friendship and also work as a business partner? [00:22:45] Speaker B: We are very lucky in that we are kind of wired perfectly to do that. And then there's a third one of ours who's also one of my best friends as well. And it's when we all took the Clifton strengths finders, test their bottom five strengths are my top five and vice versa. Aaron is my partner, and Eleanor is our third person. And they are introverts. They never really love living in the house. Eleanor never wants to speak to people or be front facing. Erin likes to do a lot of the trainings with me, but she never wants to do keynotes. And I'm out here as this, like, cyclone of extroversion. And so that all really works. I have absolutely driven Erin nuts in the past with my complete lack of organization, but also, I also have a separate role. I'm also the CoO of our parent company, which is a network of companies my brother and I co own. And so they also need to recognize that, like, there's stuff they have no idea is happening. [00:23:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:44] Speaker B: And they'll never know. And sometimes it's because I can't tell them, and sometimes it's because I forget to. And so we've come up with systems of keeping me accountable and helping me understand things and keeping me on tasks and making sure I know what I'm supposed to be doing. When I am the idea person, I come up with these giant, massive, cockamamie ideas, and they figure out how to make it work or throw it out. So it's a lot of communication. It's a lot of. I'm really good at hiring people. Two, I would not have hired either one of them if I didn't know they fit with the things I was shit at. So then we all see the world the same way. We all want the. We all want the same things. We want the world to look the same way, and so that makes working together really easy. [00:24:29] Speaker A: That's just so awesome. That's so cool. I mean, I have one best friend who is. We've known each other since, like, the 7th grade, and I love her to pieces. She's very much. It's same thing. Like, we balance each other out. One thing I've said I'll never do is live with her, though. She's. She's way too. She's. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, no, Erin and I did it for four months, and it almost ended us. So, no, that will not happen. No, that will not happen. Nope. [00:24:52] Speaker A: I love her, but, like, she'll organize things and it's like, I don't know her. I don't even know where my. Like, why would you do that? Things are in their order. But that's just so awesome to hear. So thank you for sharing that. I feel like that's such a unicorn in the business space, you know? [00:25:08] Speaker B: We are aware. Yeah. [00:25:11] Speaker A: So one other thing that I was looking at when I was looking you up is generations expert. What do you mean by that? [00:25:17] Speaker B: Spend a lot of time helping people understand that Gen Z is not lazy. They are traumatized. [00:25:23] Speaker A: Tell me more, please. I'm a little biased, but please. [00:25:27] Speaker B: I mean, with the caveat that there are crap bag humans in every generation. Gen Z is the first generation to go through puberty on the Internet. And that changes how you understand yourself, the world. We know that Instagram is a damaging and harmful presence in the lives of our. Of our girls especially. We know that a lot. The absolute easy access to non like, to multi generational spaces online where no one knows how old anyone is ever, has been really bad for boys and girls both. But boys development, for sure. And, like, access to four chan and all of that, not been great. So their brains are being developed. And as Erin and I always say, their baby brains are cooking at a different rate and a different pattern than any of the rest of us ever have. Like, I know a life without Internet in my house. I got it in middle school. My college interns do nothing have any concept of that. And so we take all of that. So their brains are a little bit different, they're a little bit slower. And then you combine a couple other things. One, you add in the no Child left behind school schooling philosophy, where they are taught not to creatively think and instead to memorize and regurgitate. We have an absolute epidemic of school shootings in this country. So not only do you allow weapons to continue when they come into schools, you do active shooter drills to remind them they're not safe and to remind them that if they don't do the right things, they might die. Then you have parents who we refer to as lawnmower parents. They have just done everything for their kids. So these kids are not ever allowed to make low stakes decisions. They have no experience making tiny mistakes. So to them, every mistake feels massive. So you want to know why people aren't talking in meetings? It's because they are afraid to be embarrassed, and they are afraid to be wrong. So we need to come up with ways to help them be wrong in quiet ways, so they can be wrong in loud ways, because they need to learn that being wrong is part of it. But from what I understand, in some of the places of no child left behind, being wrong was punished, and your school lost funding. Like so, if you didn't, if you failed the test, if you like. We taught these kids that education is about milestones of tests and grades. We did not teach them how to write. We did not teach them how to think. We did not teach them how to be creative. We did not give them reign to figure out who they were. You can talk to most college professors, and they will tell you that the last ten years has been totally different than what they trained for or what they'd had before. There's lots of progressions in the top three generations. There's a really big gap with Gen Z, again, because of the digital nativeness. And then you take that all, and they're all these kind of baby brains, and they already don't. They've already not been given permission to think creatively. On the whole, they're already afraid to talk. They already think completely, literally and not abstractly. And then, right at some of their most key adult developmental moments, Covid happens and we shove them inside. And they are very comfortable making friends on the Internet. That's fine. But now it's their whole world, and they're desperate for human contact. So then they try to get jobs, and we're all. And we're all remote, and they don't know how to learn how to do a job on the Internet. So all of the tiny ways you've been taught how to be a professional by being in the workplace, whatever your workplace is, if your workplace is labor, you've been taught how to be a professional there, too. I don't care what your workplace is. They've been robbed of that for a couple different reasons. Pretty consistently. There was a statistic that was flying around in, like, 22 that, like, that generation of college students was the. Was the first one to overwhelmingly that less of them had jobs before college than who did have jobs before college. And it's because we've now programmed parents to shove their kid into every extracurricular because they have to get to college. And again, life becomes about tick boxes and achievements. Like we make fun of millennials for participation trophies. No, it's not. It's not quite the way. In the same way that millennials are not killing the economy because we're buying too much avocado toast, we're killing the economy because we have crushing student loan debt that no one seems to want to help us with, Gen X is not angry all the time. They were abandoned, forgotten, and no one has given them the appropriate resources. They're caught in between a lot of things. Boomers are nothing, are not homophobic and racist and awful. And like all of these things, if they are any of those elements as individuals, it's because everything is moving too fast, and no one is being kind and taking time enough to explain things. And when you don't understand what's going on, it's very easy to become afraid of things. Fear then leads to anger. And there's a lot of systems on the planet right now that spend a lot of time making people afraid of things. So again, individuals with all those systems, individuals within it, and you're all people listening are popping off people that prove me wrong. Totally fair. I'm a sociologist. Our job is patterns. [00:30:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:31] Speaker B: And so these are the patterns we're seeing. I'm particularly passionate about Gen Z, I will say, because I get really, really tired of people saying that they're just really lazy. I remember being called lazy when I was their age. My mom remembers being called lazy when she was their age. We do this to young people that are changing the way work looks. We call them lazy. So this is. They're both getting hit with. This is a thing we do to all young people, and they are legitimately different. So I just try to give them hugs and tell them they're gonna be okay. [00:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:02] Speaker B: Please respond to email, because they are. Everyone's allowed to be annoyed at you about that. [00:31:06] Speaker A: Let's respond to email. [00:31:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No one's perfect. We have to learn from each other. Yeah. So when we go in to do trainings and have conversations, I think a lot of people are waiting for me to come in and, like, agree with them how awful their young employees are, and then tell their young employees to change. And instead, I'm actually doing the opposite. No, no, no. You're being ridiculous. Figure out why you're doing what you're doing. Figure out if it's actually important or not. And, like, if it's not, then let them change it. If it is, tell them why it can't change. [00:31:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:36] Speaker B: Stop assuming that everyone knows how to be in your office. [00:31:40] Speaker A: And yes, yes, yes to everything you just said. But what I also find really interesting about the work that you do is that you are inherently challenging fundamental systems of our society in so many different ways and factions. And so I have two questions from that, but the first one being, how do you do that? How are you able to come into spaces that, you know, you might have a conflicting opinion on, to educate, to show a different opinion to someone, and, you know, there's going to be that inherent tension. Like, how are you able to navigate that? [00:32:15] Speaker B: I ignore the inherent tension a lot, which probably helps. I think I come from a family that very much believes in innovation and in saying the brave things out loud, and that the world is not as it can be and it's not even as it should be. But if I accept it as it is, I have failed. And I started getting that message from a real young age. I mean, we have a family mission statement to impact lives and create holistic wealth. Like, that's our family mission statement. [00:32:40] Speaker A: Wow. [00:32:41] Speaker B: So I think I come, people will ask Erin and I this question when we're sitting next to each other and they'll look at her and be like, is she always like this? And Erin's like, yeah, since I met her. Like, this is just who she is. I've been very, very blessed with a lot of training and a couple natural inclinations to be able to break down complicated concepts and get it down to kind of the base stuff. I'm really pragmatic and so I can help people connect the dots really quickly. I know a ton of pop culture references and cultural jokes and so I can kind of connect things pretty quickly. I think, more than anything is that I know that what we're doing is worth a shot. What I am proposing is worth a shot because we've tried everything else and it has not worked. So why don't we try this? And then if we get data to prove that this is wrong, amazing. Let's try something else. But I need you to give me data to prove this is wrong first. And in the meantime, I'm just going to be inviting the rest of you into this innovation, into this disruption, into this new hope of what it can be. Because I'm tired of the other ways. [00:33:46] Speaker A: Ugh. Yeah. That is so true. Just giving it a shot. You just don't know. On the heels of that, is there a client or person that you've spoken with in this work that has stuck with you, good or bad? [00:34:01] Speaker B: Oh, so many, honestly. And I don't like, I don't want to, you know, really kind of, kind of call anyone out. Oh, no in particular. And some of this is that, like, Abby research is the current incarnation of this work. [00:34:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:16] Speaker B: But I've been doing, I mean, I was a youth worker from when I was twelve, and I've been having these kind of conversations with people for decades now of inviting people into different ways of looking at the world and how can we do that and what does it kind of look like? And I've done it all over the world and I've done it all those, and I'm really, really blessed to be able to be invited into people's lives that way. It's been a really, really fun and grief stricken and a lot of experiences. But I think one of the things that, one of the patterns we've noticed in the last couple years trying to do corporate training is that a lot of people, bosses, mostly dudes, I'll be really honest, so many dudes, we go in and we say, hey, like, you've come to us and you said you have a culture issue, or there's conflict or, like, whatnot, and we present our solution, our, you know, pitch, and we present our solutions and they'll just look right at us. I can do everything you just proposed doing. [00:35:14] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:35:15] Speaker B: And what I, what I've kind of learned from that is, I mean, all of the, I've never worked in corporate America, so, like, all of the layers of it mystify me. But people don't understand how hard it is to have new ideas. And so I need to give them grace in order to bring them along with me because I'm asking them to see, literally to see things differently. And that's a lot of labor on their part. And I need to be gracious to that and I need to be, to be kind to that. And then also that some people just will not ever, and they're just jerks. And, like, that's just like, how can you look at somebody and say your entire life work is nonsense? Because I think I can do it, you know, but people do. People do that all the time. But then we had a, we had one client a couple years ago who I absolutely like when he came up to talk to us, I totally wrote him off as like, oh, you're not going to be, you're not going to get on board with this. Like, you're not going to be progressive. You're not going to be innovative. You're not going to be any of those things. It was based on what he was wearing and his job title and some other things like that. And, like, got on a Zoom call with him and he's like, I'm looking to change our organization top to bottom. I'm looking to, you know, I'm new here, but I'm going to integrate, like, you know, he named quite a lot of, kind of, kind of very progressive culturally and politically things. Like, I'm going to have gender neutral bathrooms and I'm going to do all, I'm going to make sure to pass out menstruation products and, like, all these kind of things. And I was like, you just smacked me upside the head and I was so wrong, and I was so wrong, and I am delighted to be wrong. And when. And he is. He's absolutely wonderful. And when I think about hope can flourish in the weirdest places, I think about that. [00:37:02] Speaker A: That organization that's such a lovely takeaway. Hope flourishing in weird places. That's so. That's so lovely. Kind of on the heels of that, but a little different. Can you remember in your career, in your life, a time where you failed? And. [00:37:21] Speaker B: I know. [00:37:22] Speaker A: Right. Pick your favorite one, but what you were able to learn from or how it's shaped you now. [00:37:28] Speaker B: Okay, so, first of all, in my family, I have never been allowed to fail without a lesson, ever. [00:37:34] Speaker A: Wow. [00:37:34] Speaker B: So, like, when I would go to dad and be like, I did this wrong, he'd be like, what did you learn from? Like, that's been, like, that's been the thing. And there's some real exhaustion to that when you're 15 and you just want to say, like, I screwed up. Like, why do I have to learn from, like, yeah, but then there's some other. There's some real beauty to it. I mean, my God, when did I. When did I screw up last? And it's the most recent incarnation. The thing I do the most often is I am not as good at asking questions as I wish I was. And so I'll be in group settings, and someone will say something, and I'll just kind of go off on my answer to that question, and I am. And it's a situation in which I'm supposed to be giving and taking. It's supposed to be a conversation, and I don't ask enough follow up questions to really understand what's going on. And I make a lot of assumptions. And it's the thing we teach people all the time is, you know, ask. Ask more questions, make less assumptions. And I'm really bad at that, and I'm really bad at it. And it happens frequently enough that I have lots of tiny chances to change it. And I'm not ever really good at doing that. And there's clients I blew because I got to, you know, I got to, you know, there's some stuff I've done, like, not in this company, necessarily, but in some other places where, like, I didn't file something on time and because I was. I was egotistical enough to not ask for help because I thought it was pathetic that I couldn't manage this piece of adulthood. And so instead of going to somebody and saying, I'm going to need you to remind me to do this, because this is not my skill set. I kept trying to improve things I was terrible at instead of deepening the things I was already good at. And that wasted so much time of me trying and failing and stumbling and blowing calls and hurting people until I could finally just be like, you know what? [00:39:27] Speaker A: I'm. [00:39:27] Speaker B: I am not going to respond to your email in a timely manner, and I am so sorry, but we're going to figure out what the best way to communicate together is. Like, all of that. So I think those are kind of the most relevant to this conversation. [00:39:40] Speaker A: I love that there's. I relate on too many levels about responding to emails and blowing things in the last minute over the stupidest little things. And it's like, why? Why can't I do this alone? Like, I should be able to do this alone. I'm an adult, right? Like I should. And it's. And even the piece, especially the piece actually, about feeling pathetic, like that inherent shame, like, I should be able to do this alone. Why can't I? Yeah. [00:40:09] Speaker B: Because the Puritans baked it into who we see ourselves as. Like, that's all puritanical theology. [00:40:15] Speaker A: That, like, that is just so interesting that. Can you talk a little bit more about how you've been able to combat that? Because I personally am. [00:40:23] Speaker B: So much therapy. So much therapy. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that, like, one of the things I hope people are hearing is that all the stuff I teach, I still believe a lot. And every single time I teach it, I get to deconstruct it a little bit more and I get to dip down into it a little bit more and I get to learn from somebody else how they're doing it and I get to make it, but I am not done. I will never be done. I swim in this suit just like you do. And we spend a decent amount of the book telling you our stories around it and telling you some of our solutions. And because we're in it, we're Americans, and this is how we were raised. And I was raised in the northeast and Aaron was raised out west, and there's some real differences in how we were raised and kind of what that means. But what do you do? How do you combat it? You just do. You decide to. There's a great line in an avid brothers song that I quote all the time, and the line is, just decide what to be and go be it. And I think being a human is really hard. Do not get me wrong. It is so hard. And I mean, it's so hard. None of us get out of it alive. It is so, so hard. But I contend a lot of it is simple. Love yourself, love other people. Do everything you can to make those two things happen. That's the mess where it gets complicated and it gets difficult and it gets weird and it gets wonky and it gets all those kind of other things. But truly, there's a lot of simplicity. Decide what to be and go be it. Yeah. [00:41:52] Speaker A: And that is so hard. Oh, it's impossible. Oh, my gosh. [00:41:57] Speaker B: Because, like, what I have decided to be and I'm going to be, it requires a whole lot of other people to make decisions about. It requires. It requires conference organizers to say, yes, I'll have you on my stage. It requires companies to hire us. It requires all of those things. But here is. Here is the true deal. All I can control and all I am accountable for is to decide what to be and go be it. And if I show up the best way I can and I am ready for the moment and I embrace the mystery and all those kind of other things, like do the cards and smell the salt and do the. All the other, like, whatever that looks like for you, whatever. And that says, non judgmentally, I honestly do not care. [00:42:36] Speaker A: I. [00:42:37] Speaker B: It just makes sure it makes sense for you because, like, if it doesn't help, if it doesn't hurt you, hurt me or hurt me, and it brings you joy, why is it my business? But if you just commit to being the best version of what you want to be, put in the work, acknowledge the limitations you cannot change. Push out the limitations that you can, ask for help as much as you need to. Ground yourself in your own humanity and decide what to be and go be it. And then at some point, you're going to run into a wall and that dream is going to die, and you're going to decide something else to be, and you're going to go be it, and you're going to change directions a million times and you're going to make tiny changes. That change is exactly what you want to be. But I will tell you, since I was seven years old, I have wanted to be this. What I'm doing right now, I have wanted to change the world. I've done it a million different ways. I've done it as a youth worker, as a professor, as a PhD student, as a sex ed teacher, as a whole lot of things. But this has been what I decided to be, and I went to be it. And I think all of us joke all the time about, like, none of us are using our career. Like, none of us use our college degrees and, like, all that kind of stuff. My guess is that there's a core of you that you're trying to be. Whether the core is, I want to be a good parent. The core is I want to be like, my life here is I want to be happy. Amazing. So figure it out. My core in life is this. So decide what to be and go be it. It's hard as hell, but we can do hard things, and we can do them together. [00:44:13] Speaker A: That's the big. It's just. It's such a catch 22 in a sense, because it's like, you have to do it together. But there's always that piece of, like, you're not alone, and you can't be alone, because how else do you succeed and go far? You have to go together. But we're in the system that's like, no, you have to do it alone. And if you're not doing it alone, you're pathetic. But how am I supposed to be with. It's just this. [00:44:36] Speaker B: Oh, it's a mess. It's a mess. So one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs is her song, you're on your own, kid. And it's the one where all the friendship bracelets come from, if people want to know. Like, that's. It's. There's a line in it, and the first couple of verses are really painful to listen to if you think about it as a human of all of the ways of which she tried to get people to love her and all of the people, like, there's a. Like, I hosted parties and starved my body. Like I'd be saved by a perfect kiss. Like, oh, that hits. But then the bridge is the real message, and it's, you know, by the way, you can't control any of that. All of that. All of that happened. Yeah, but a page is turned with every bridge you burn, and every move is a step you take. And so then she takes this deep breath and she says, so, make the friendship bracelets and take the moment and taste it. You've gotten reason to be afraid. And for me, the whole message is, yeah, this was all shit. All shit. But you are allowed to want and need good people. But you're on your own, kid. You always have been. You can face this. So you have the strength within you to do this in all of the right ways that you're on your own, kid, and not the bad ways. You're on your own. And I think about it a lot of. I mean. I mean, I. You know, sing it screaming down the road as I'm going. But every time I put on my break, my friendship bracelets that I've gotten from various swifties all over the country, and I think about what that song means to so many people is that here's all the ways I was trying to do life entirely by myself, and it nearly killed me. And I was looking for love in all of the wrong places. I mean, not to be really cliche, but, like, I was looking for that community in places where people just wanted proximity. But then you can trust people. You can find the right. Find the right people, find the right thing, find the right alone. Find. But always remember that you have within you the strength to do this. And English fails us. That we have to use the word alone for both of those things. Like, you can do it on your own, but you shouldn't do it on your own. Like, that's. There's nuances there that English just fails us. [00:46:41] Speaker A: That's. That's another thing, too. [00:46:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:43] Speaker A: Like, the. How many languages or how many ways can you say love you in Japanese? Or, you know, different? [00:46:49] Speaker B: It's a lot. Yeah. [00:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you're. Absolutely. And there's only one in English, and that. That's so true. Or even in, like, for. I mean, the Bible. Like, there are several different ways to say I love you. [00:46:59] Speaker B: No, four words. In Greece. Yeah. In Greek. Yeah. Four different words. Yeah. [00:47:03] Speaker A: It's just. Yeah. Even something as simple as linguistics, that's. [00:47:07] Speaker B: Ugh. [00:47:07] Speaker A: This has been such a fabulous conversation. I always end it with one last question for you. If you were to go back to the beginning, wherever the beginning may be for you and your journey, what would you tell yourself? [00:47:19] Speaker B: It's gonna be okay. [00:47:20] Speaker A: Ooh. It's so simple. It's so simple, it's almost frustrating, but it's true. [00:47:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And she would not believe me. Like, she would not. She would in no way, shape, or form, believe me. But it is. It is. My mother always used to say, it came to pass, it didn't come to stay. And that has been a lot of. A lot of the things I've held to, but, yeah, I don't know what it is, and I don't know what okay looks like, and I don't have control over it, any of that. But it is going to be okay. You're gonna. You're gonna figure it out. [00:47:51] Speaker A: I'll take that for the road. I definitely need that in my own personal life right now. Honestly, aren't we all climbing one mountain after other? But. Oh, man. Thank you so much for your time. [00:48:03] Speaker B: Thank you for asking me. This was a delight. Oh, yes.